Illness
by Stevie19
Summary: Yes, there is an illness that can drive you insane. It's an alien illness, and Nightwing gets it. Somehow. Set after season 2, possible character death.


There was an illness inside of him. Oh yes, there was. Don't try to deny it. He could feel it behind his eyes, in his bones, crashing through his veins. It had started at the alien invasion(not **_The_** Invasion, but an invasion nonetheless. Sometimes it seemed their efforts to protect the Earth were useless, always in an endless battle of Invasions and evil geniuses. A neverending cycle. Sometimes he was tired of it, and sometimes it lit his body on fire, twirling and fighting like he had been born to do it), when a slug like creature had attatched itself to him. It had put the illness inside of him, like dog could give you rabies. He pulled it off, defeating it, but at a cost. When Bruce(Batman at the time)asked if he was okay, he said he was fine.

He wasn't.

It had started minutes later(give or take an hour. It was hard to tell in the heat of the battle). He felt something wriggling through his chest, an unpleasant feeling that he would never forget(how could he?). It crawled up behind his lungs, hitting him with electrifying white pain he was so painfully unprepared for. He managed to control it then, taking deeper breaths faster and faster as his vision blurred. Batman nearly clobbered him for getting him and his very own brother nearly killed. It was then he knew that he could tell nobody.

He went for months with careful hiding, with nobody knowing. Sometimes it struck without warning, but he always managed to hide these unexpected moments from his friends, allies and family. At least, to his information. If they did know, they didn't say anything, maybe because they thought they had been mistaken and it wasn't a big deal. Or maybe they didn't care. Either way. They never knew, never 't tell, never tell, always handle things by himself. Don't be a liabilty, don't make them worry by admitting the pain. Smile, smile, smile. 'I'm alright, I'm okay.' Don't burden them. That's how it works. For three months and 29 days he hid it. Then it hit him hard(luckily in his apartment, where nobody else could see his weakness and pain).

The white light didn't go away for days and each of skin, blood, hair on his body burned like somebody had ripped his skin raw and bleeding and then poured salt on the wounds-literally. He writhed in his bed for three days, his screams of agony fell to the deaf ears of his neighbors. His limbs spared and twisted at unnatural, odd angles. He fell out of bed on the 4th day, to weak to get back onto it or do anything else. All he saw was chaos and his destruction. The ticking of the clock-the bomb-echoed in his head, along with the manical laugh of the Joker. He heard and saw things a human brain couldn't even comprehend a fraction of-heck, even superior alien minds had a hard time not going crazy from the things the disease made them see/hear/smell. His screams became blood, blood oozing from his throat to his tongue, down his chin and dripping onto his new shirt. His eardrums pounded and exploded.

Everything he had ever faced...everything he had ever feared and things he didn't even know he was afraid of was back to haunt him at a whole new level. He tried to kill himself with a shattered glass from his window frame, pounding at his chest. Blood oozed out and the sharp shard stuck there, leaving him with pain that a human could not experience, espicially not at 19 years old. _Why wouldn't he just_ _ **die**_ _?!_

Particles swirled in front of him, joining together to form a familiar form. Dick stared up at him, unmasked blue eyes staring up with terror. "Wally..." he croaked. The speedster(dead, dead, dead)stared at him angrily, and Dick longed for the times when Wally was more likely to make a joke than punch him. Then his arms uncrossed, and he stared at Dick with soft, hurt eyes(hate still glimmered in his eyes, face, body-so much hate).

"Why did you let me die..?"Wally croaked, fading and fading. Blood covered his uniform and his limbs broke down, from all the other times Dick had failed him. Wally was practically dying in front of him(pain, pain, pain), a more painful death than Dick never wished on anybody, not even the Joker("He screamed, y'know, after the first couple of times I hit him. I wonder if you will do the same?"). Bones jutted through the crimson scarred speedster, the stark white a contrast with the pale color of his fading friend(more like brother...enemy). "All your fault..."

"All your fault..."they whispered. They were all staring at him, everybody he had ever failed and let them die. His parents, Tula, all those civillians who had done nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time, Jason-oh god, Jason, who had been a better brother and friend than he ever would. They all stared at him, eyes boring holes into his skin as he watched them die, again and again. "All your fault..."

"No,"he sobbed, he didn't even know he had tears left to burned down his face, tracing the same path down his skin, cutting holes deep into his face. They tasted like the ocean- _the waves crashed around him, he couldn't breath, splashing water as he struggled to keep afloat, why couldn't he breath? Drowning, drowning he was drowning*._ "No, I tried, I'll try better next time."

"There won't be a next time."Kaldur's voice echoed through his skull, and the team stood around him. They all glared, he was the point of so much hate, so much suffering.. He never meant for it to go this far! And now...now they all hated him for it.

"No guys, I-"He tried to explain, tried to stand up so he could defend himself(but that's what he was, wasn't it? A manipulative bastard who only thought of himself and paid no heed to the consequences-people-around him). But he couldn't. He was trapped, tied down. Two-face stood above him, one half the ugly, bumped TwoFace and the other side Harvey Dent. Hot, acrid hit his face like a slap, and he scrunched up his nose. Couldn't help it.

"Let's see if Lady Luck's on your side tonight." Two-Face sneered, and the coin flipped through the air. It was a comet of gold and spinning out uncontrollably. Dick stared at it with wide eyes. His entire fate based on a single coin, and luck. The coin landed and Two-Face smiled(as much as he could).Oh. Well, he wasn't the luckiest guy anyway. The villain picked up a bat, "Looks like she isn't."

The hit sent him flying(Two-Face should play baseball...actually, on second thought, that would probably be a VERY bad idea). He slid across the floor, feeling a tooth rattling around in his mouth(tasted a little like copper, sharp, tangy and not tasteful at all) and the Joker's laugh echoing around him constantly. Dick skidded, and landed at the feet of a very familiar pair of boots. He looked up. Batman.

"Oh god, Bruce, the white pain won't go away and-"Talking to the very person he dreaded to be, the same person he had promised himself to never talk to again unless absolutely nessecary. Said person looked down at him(isn't that how Bruce always saw him?)with a dismissive frown on his face."You're getting blood on my cape." Like he wasn't begging for help to the almighty Batman, like everybody wasn't dying around him. Like he wasn't dying(was he? He didn't know anymore).

"But-"Dick tried, and Batman growled(that's right. Sit, stay like a good little doggie and don't question Master). "Don't come back." With a kick across the ribs that had Dick rolling back to Two-Face. _But you promised you'd always be there for me, Bruce, don't turn back on that now!_ Dick tried to scream, but it was more like a whimper instead. He was like a dog. Whimpering whenever his demands weren't met, never doing anything to make them met. Dogs were better than him, even. At least with a dog it won't betray you and send people to their deaths.

He closed his eyes and waited for the next torment(the next part of his life) to come, but nothing happened. He opened his eyes. He was alone, nobody was there. Nobody cared, everybody just pretended to care for a broken heart(was it? did he even have a heart, or did it shatter completely the day Jason died?). A mirthless laugh escaped his lips. That was what he wanted for the last year, wasn't it? To be left alone so his perfect would go undisturbed. Let it wreck those around him, while he was completely safe from it all. He was worse than Batman had been, his worst nightmare of becoming. But it's okay, though, because he wasn't him-wasn't Batman. He was worse-the lightning hot pain intensified, worming it's way through his mouth(still tasted like salted, wasn't even aware he cried that much-weak, pretending to be strong, hiding behind a mask. That's all he was), bursting from his eyes.

His scream echoed around the apartment one more time before he twitched and fell silent.

Batman crouched over Dick's body. The teen's arms were bent at unnatural angles and blood still leaked from his throat. His eyes were cold, grey, glassy-unseeing. A glass shard stuck in his chest, an attempt for suicide, the pointy side embedded in his flesh and room was even more of a mess, and Batman didn't want to look at it. That would be for later. The boy he should've called his son was a mess, sweat streaking his long ebony bangs, wrapped in a cocoon of his blanket that he been too weak, too focused on the dangers that weren't there, to get out. Dick's heart still beat, slowly...But, in his mind, there was nobody home. The things he had seen and no doubt heard had wheeled his mind off to insanity. Just like...just like Joker's had been. Except Dick wasn't the Joker. He was a teenager with his whole life ahead of him...he was somebody that Bruce knew well(some even went as far as to say he _cared_ for the boy, which may or may not have been true). Somebody who had looked up to him and was shoved aside.

The computer said that Dick had an unknown disease crawling through him, from the alien that looked like a slug while the JLA and the team were fighting off (another)alien invasion four months ago. Dick had brushed it off, said he was fine. And, later, Bruce had yelled at him. They fought, Bruce being the one starting it. He had pushed Dick away from confessing his condition to anyone, because he had been selfish and arrogant not to think Dick was injured. It was Bruce's fault. He failed his so-ward.

If there was one selfish thing Bruce wanted to happen in the universe(besides wanting his parents back. That would be nice, too), it would be to have Dick with him, laughing and talking and fighting crime together. It was a bit late but now was as good as ever. And he should've done it when Dick was still with him. Not fight and correct him all the time instead of praise.

"I love you. I always thought of you as my son." the words drifted out of his mouth(without his permission, mind you)like petals, floating down onward peacefully onto Dick.

Maybe the teen heard, because Bruce could've sworn he saw a smile on his face.

 **I sense a theme somewhere. This was originally written a long time ago, so I hope the edits I made now don't clash too badly with the original version. And he was hallucinating there, the team, Two-Face, etc., weren't actually there. Asterisk=I adopted this from another fanfic(forgot it's name)where Dick didn't know how to swim so Batman dumped him in an ocean (actually, it was a pool or something but, for the sake of the story, let's make it an ocean). So, yeah. More than 2000 words! :D**

 **Review?**


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